


Type III Error

by Anonymous



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: sherlockbbc_fic, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Haunting, M/M, Romance, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-29
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-19 19:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock didn't believe in the afterlife. But if he did, this (being stuck haunting a limping ex-Army doctor with supposed PTSD) wouldn't have been what he'd imagined.</p><p>A kinkmeme prompt fill</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fill being written for [this prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/20063.html?thread=120871519#t120871519) on the BBC Sherlock kinkmeme. Don't read the full prompt if you'd rather not be spoiled for what's going to happens; it's a fairly thorough prompt.
> 
> I'll be cleaning up the parts previously posted and putting those up as I struggle to finish the rest of this story. So sorry this is taking me so long to write...
> 
> Many thanks to the prompt OP for the wonderful jumping off point. I hope this lives up to all your expectations.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock dies?

Serial killers were Sherlock's favorite. It was a shame there weren't more of them at any given time. Lestrade would disagree, but he had a stunning lack of imagination.

There was something about serial killers and learned behavior, whether it be their choice in victims or the way they went about ending the lives of those victims. Psychology would have you believe that they were repeating patterns from childhood and trauma, like some twisted coping mechanism. Repetition. Actions primed by atypical neurobiology and reinforced through rewards suffused in a chemical cocktail of euphoria. Hidden patterns. It had all the makings of a good puzzle, where behavior and criminality coalesced into an once-in-a-lifetime code spelled out in murder.

It was all in the patterns. Usually. If serial killers had a rigid MO, they didn't deviate from it. Some just couldn't.

Which was why Sherlock miscalculated. The killer had a gun. He hadn't expected the killer to have a gun, not when all the murders were committed so lovingly by hand and each scene arranged with the utmost care. Guns were practical, utilitarian, and impersonal by comparison. Sherlock hadn't thought to account for the possibility of a firearm.

It was a fatal mistake— was going to be a fatal mistake.

By the time he registered the firearm behind pulled from under the killer's jacket, it was too late. The shot rang like an explosion and Sherlock was falling back onto the cold pavement. The sound of pounding footsteps signaled the killer's retreat. Which was expected, as Sherlock was hardly his type.

He had several trains of thought in those first moments.

One, he had never been shot before. And it fucking hurt.

Two, it really hurt— like fire spreading from his stomach out to the rest of his body.

Three, the killer had terrible aim. He had aimed for the chest and completely missed, hitting his abdomen instead. At least an entire foot off target.

Four, GSW to the abdominal area (upper? lower?). Muscle damage almost certain. Nerve damage could only be determined at a later time. Increased chances of puncturing vital organs. Leaked acids from a ruptured stomach would be decidedly unpleasant. Or worse, he may end up septic if the wound pierced any part of his intestinal tract. That was if he didn't bleed out first. Conclusion: prognosis was grim without immediate medical attention.

His hands were heavy as he pressed one against the bleeding wound and the other typed out a one word text message to Lestrade.

_Dying.  
_ _SH_

Lestrade shouldn't be more than ten minutes behind him. But Sherlock may not have that much time.

At least he proved Mycroft wrong. His brother always said that at the rate Sherlock was going, he was going to end up dead in an alleyway before thirty. Sherlock was thirty-five this year, and he was bleeding out in Charterhouse Square in the dead of night. Take that, Mycroft (ever nagging, chastising, and meddling).

So Sherlock laid there and waited to die.

The sound of an uneven gait came rushing towards him. It was one foot dragging in the wake of the other, accompanied by the loud click of a cane (medical and metallic) against the pavement. Not Lestrade then. The stranger dropped to Sherlock's prone side, allowing his cane to fall with a clatter.

"Sir, are you okay?" He asked. Despite the insipid question itself, the words were spoken with steely resolve.

Sherlock would have rolled his eyes, but that called for more energy than he had to spare at the moment. Instead, he settled for a gravelly "fantastic."

"Don't move." The stranger warned.

He turned his head to get a look at the Good Samaritan. The streetlights cast an orange sheen over the man's light blond hair. His face was lined with some wrinkles and the remnants of joy and sorrow. The haircut screamed military, which explained all the years clearly etched in the lines of his face. There was the cane. Coupled with the mannerism (assessing and commanding), there was only one conclusion to be drawn: war veteran with a recent medical discharge, not yet re-adjusted to civilian life.

Obvious even in his current state.

Cloth rustled as the other man shed his coat and removed Sherlock's hand from his stomach to examine the wound. As he worked the buttons out of Sherlock's shirt, he spoke again. "My name is John. What's yours?"

At least his voice had yet to fail him. "Sherlock."

"I'm just going to take a look. I'm a doctor. You're going to be fine."

An army doctor! There was always something.

Sherlock hissed when John pulled back the shirt plastered to his body. He couldn't see John's face from that angle, so there was no telling how bad he really was. After a moment, John rearranged Sherlock's hand back over the wound with his coat acting as a makeshift bandage. "Do me a favor and press down on that, yeah?"

John had already turned away and was talking on a mobile. Even in the dim lightning as Sherlock's brain became sluggish from the blood loss, he could still make out the engraved detailing on the back of the man's phone.

_Harry Watson_  
 _From Clara  
_ _xxx_

"Hello, I'm calling to report a gunshot wound victim at Charterhouse Square, near Carthusian Street. Victim is male, in his mid-thirties, and both conscious and responding to verbal and," John waved a bloody hand in his face and Sherlock followed the motion with his eyes as best as he could. "Visual input. Despite applying pressure, he's been bleeding nonstop for the past five minutes or so..."

The rest of the doctor's words faded in and out over the dull roar of blood in Sherlock's ear. His vision wavered in the peripheral, halving the rush of data he usually had. His body shook as he choked and struggled for his next breath and the one after that. He was drifting in and out; there was the press of hands against his stomach and lips against his own.

"Hey, stay with me!"

John's eyes were blue, but the night and the darkness of his dilated pupils made them appear almost brown. Sherlock felt his heart skip a beat and then stopped altogether.

-x-x-x-

PTSD, that was what the therapist diagnosed John with when he came back from Afghanistan. Except it didn't really explain anything, not the grayness muffling his world or his damn leg. Or why he was wandering around Central London in the middle of the night, miles away from his bedsit in Hammersmith. Or why the very familiar sound of gunfire sent him running (limping and scrambling more like) toward, rather than away from the source.

A part of him wanted to go after the armed assailant. But he himself wasn't armed because his illegal service revolver was still sitting in the top drawer of his desk back home. More importantly, there was a man lying on his back in an ever-expanding pool of blood.

The next minutes was gone in a blur of emergency first aid and frantic word to the emergency operator. Then the man— Sherlock, who named their child Sherlock?— began gasping for air, leaving John to try and alleviate the airway obstruction while still keeping pressure on the wound.

"Christ, Sherlock!"

He hadn't even noticed the new arrival, a tall man with dark gray hair, until he spoke.

"Help me, keep the pressure there," John barked when the other man continued to stand there fixed with an expression of horror.

His patient's pallor was turning blue. He was dropping in and out of consciousness.

"Hey, stay with me!" John barked.

When the ambulance arrived not even three minutes later, his patient could not longer breathe on his own. John jumped back as the EMS workers swooped in with a stretcher and tracheal intubation. As they pulled the body into back of the vehicle, he could hear one EMS worker speaking into his radio, "Incoming trauma patient, code blue, requesting—"

The rest of the statement was cut off as the back doors were slammed in John's face and the ambulance took off.

It turned out that gray-haired man was a detective inspector with Scotland Yard. As John gave his statement (no, he didn't get a good look at the shooter), the alertness from before quickly faded, giving way to bone-chilling weariness. The police sergeant who arrived later took pity on him and pulled a shock blanket from the patrol car after a glance at his ruined jacket.

"Wouldn't want you to freeze on your way home," she said. "Do you need a ride home?"

He shook his head. The idea of being trapped in the back of a police vehicle didn't sit well with him. Even if it was a free ride back to the bedsit.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Doctor Watson. We'll contact you if we have any further questions."

Before she could walk away, he swallowed the lump around his throat and called, "Is..." he worried his bottom lip before continuing. "Sherlock going okay?"

She shrugged, causing her curly hair to bounce in the bright police lights. "Dunno. That remains to be seen. Maybe if he's lucky." Then she was gone and inspecting the dry blood splatter with the police inspector.

John's stomach dropped. Optimism was hard to come by nowadays. Abdominal gunshot wounds were always tricky. An unfortunate injury a few centimeters too far in one direction could mean a ruptured spleen or liver. Even if surgery was successful (if he hadn't already died from blood loss), there were untold complications. He tried not to think about it— about another patient lost (one more he couldn't save).

Then there was the guilt. It had taken someone's life in the balance to shake him free of the gray. But even that was short-lived. His left hand, which had been so sure and steady just minutes ago, began shaking again.

More police were arriving to cordon off the scene. As John reached the edge of the perimeter marked by the recent addition of police tape, someone called to him. A uniformed constable came running up to him and a realization struck him like lightning when he spotted his discarded cane in the officer's hand. He had been walking unaided this entire time. But his brain hated him. As soon as that little fact registered, a flare of pain lanced through his right leg. John cried out when it gave out under him.

He was mortified when the constable bent down to help him up. He had no choice but to accept the hand offered to him. He was ready for the earth to open up and swallow him when the same constable insisted on flagging down a taxi on his behalf. Like he was some sort of invalid.

_Interesting._

John stiffened and glanced. For a moment, he thought someone was speaking to him. No one was paying any attention to the limping man with the orange shock blanket though. A shiver coursed down his spinal column. It felt like someone had run their ice-cold fingers down the skin of his back. He pulled the blanket closer around himself. It must be the weather, he still wasn't used to London's cold.

Yet he couldn't shake the feeling someone was watching him all the way home.

Paranoia: finally one for PTSD then.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock is most assuredly now a ghost and even worse, bored.

If there was ever a time that Sherlock desperately needed drugs (cocaine, heroin, nicotine, anything!), it was now. Too bad Sherlock no longer had any of the biological necessities, like a circulatory system or synapses or neurotransmitter, to actually achieve a chemical high. At least he didn't think so, but there was no way to experiment on that— yet. His mind was wasting away in atrophy because he was trapped haunting the man named John Hamish Watson, who was thirty-seven and inhabited a dreary bedsit in Hammersmith. John Watson was also the singularly most boring individual in all of London, if not the world.

Whatever bright spark Sherlock had glimpsed when the former doctor worked on his failing body was likely a strange hallucination of Sherlock's dying mind. Either that or buried under many (many many) layers of sad and ugly colored wool. Because the John Watson that Sherlock had been subjected to over the last few days was a quiet and withdrawn man, defeated and devoid of hope. John somehow managed to come off more as a ghost than Sherlock (and Sherlock was the one who was bloody dead and incorporeal). It seemed like such a waste too. Had Sherlock been able to, he would have grabbed John by the shoulders and shaken some sense into him.

It was a simple matter of having John Watson sussed out within an hour of following the man away from the crime scene where he had expired. (Not that Sherlock could go anywhere else, because try as he might, he could not move further than ten feet away from the ex-soldier. It was like being bound by an infuriating and invisible leash.)

Psychosomatic limp— actual injury was a gunshot to the left shoulder (immediately confirmed within minutes of coming back to the bedsit when John changed into his pyjamas). No close family (parents deceased), except for an estranged older brother (alcoholic and newly divorced if the mobile phone was any indication). Financially struggling with no current employment and just an army pension, despite his cheap accommodations. At first, Sherlock had doubted the PTSD diagnosis (still doubts it sometimes), but John did demonstrate a number of the classic symptoms. But the depression was probably the bigger issue to overcome, and it was not at all surprising given the intermittent tremor that had stolen his career and livelihood.

The analog clock hanging on the wall next to John's bed kept ticking, loudly marking each second that slipped away. The tiny flat was filled with silence so overwhelming that it somehow muffled the traffic outside and the quiet whispers of life coming from the building's other occupants. The quiet pressed in all around them— so heavy that Sherlock wondered how John even managed to work his lungs around the obstruction. 

There were definite advantages to being a ghost (spirit/phantom/whatever; more research was necessary). Sherlock had never been particularly attached to his physical body anyway. For one, eating and drinking were finally moot point (as they ideally should have been). Sleep was another waste of time he was glad to be rid of. But all his recouped free time won him so far was more boredom than he ever imagined possible.

So as it turned out, the afterlife was just as dull as life before death. Hell, at least, would have been interesting. Almost anything is preferable to limbo in the dullest flat in London.

He hovered over John's shoulder as the shorter man struggled with his latest blog entry. It was obviously part of John's therapy process. But like everything else in the man's life, he was hardly trying. 

John considered the blank text box with its blinking cursor for almost another ten agonizing minutes before reaching out for the keyboard. With two fingers, he laboriously pecked out one short sentence.

_Nothing ever happens to me._

"Of course, nothing happens," Sherlock exploded. His non-existent skin itched like a thousand little insects was crawling all over him. "You don't do anything. Nothing! The lack of everything, the absence of anything, devoid of intention or thoughts! You're a sad little man with a non-existent limp." He kicked at the cane leaning against the writing desk.

The cane slammed against the wood with a rattling thud. John drew his pistol from the top drawer and rolled away in a smooth, practiced motion. The slide clicked back, loading a bullet into the chamber before the safety was flicked off. Sherlock half expected the former soldier to empty a clip of ammo in some wall, but he didn't. John sighted along the barrel of his gun, scanning the tiny room in a grid fashion. He wasn't panicked, but was deathly calm as he assessed his surrounding for potential danger.

It should have looked ridiculous given the state of the tiny and barren bedsit, but John Watson was rather brilliant like this— all deadly concentration and not a hint of a tremor in his sturdy hands. Slowly, he lowered the firearm with the tension rolling off his shoulders, yet remained at attention. Sherlock didn't know how, but the sight made his blood sing and his missing heart palpitate.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place. John Watson wasn't haunted by the war; he missed it (adrenaline junkie, missed the lifestyle now forever out of his reach).

After a time, the two of them focused on the fallen cane— John with suspicion and Sherlock with unabashed glee. 

He reached down for the cane. He could even see the chip in the wooden facade where the cane had collided against. His ghostly fingers wrapped around the metal and didn't pass through until he tried to lift it.

All of Sherlock's previous gloom flew out the window. He wasn't sure what warranted his study first. There was John and his limp that went away with a dose of danger (wasn't that unusual?). Then there was the possibility of affecting the real world once more. Looking at John, Sherlock realized they weren't mutually exclusive. Now was a fabulous opportunity to test how and if the average mind might overcome.

"Come on, Watson. You're really losing it now." John muttered to himself as he bent to pick up the cane. The mumbling morphed into angry cursing when his leg locked up while he was on his knees. John's shoulder drooped, and Sherlock watched as the steady man from before collapsed in on himself.

Just like that, he was gone once again. Sherlock should have been frustrated by this, but he wasn't. He knew it was there. More than that, he could be the one to reignite the spark again. He might be the only one. If he played his cards right, he might even be able to cure the man's limp. Because if he was going to be stuck with John Watson for the rest of the man's natural life, any improvement on the quality of life would ultimately also benefit Sherlock. 

It had nothing to do with delicious thrill of watching John Watson come to life again. Nothing.

Sherlock wasn't bored anymore; he was too busy planning his next move. He barely even noticed when John dragged him off to his therapy session half an hour later.

-x-x-x-

"How are you feeling today, John?" Ella asked as she settled her writing pad in her lap.

Bored.

Depressed.

His sister was off the wagon, but he couldn't be sure how far off. Somehow the lack of late-night drunken ramblings was more unnerving than being waken at 3AM to endure her screams.

Watched a man he didn't know die two days ago. Couldn't save him either.

Feeling worthless and guilty.

A bit paranoid.

But his therapist would insist on discussing any of those answers in depth. Instead, he twirled his cane plaintively and replied with, "Fine, just fine."

They both knew it was complete and utter bollocks.

John would much rather she look at him with disapproval over his reticence to talk, instead of that one of borderline pitying understanding all therapist were expected to professionally master. He didn't need her pity. He didn't need her understanding. Had he not been required to attend at least twelve of these sessions, John would never be here to begin with.

He already knew he was fucked up.

Ella's office was large and spacious, with an entire wall of window pane that opened up to a garden outside. It was winter, so there wasn't anything left alive to admire. By spring, John hoped to have left this office far behind. He supposed it was designed to help put patients at ease, but the wide gaps of space between each piece of furniture and the sparse decor gave the room an empty and soulless feel. It left John feeling dangerously exposed. Every time he sat in the chair across from Ella, he had to clamp down on the instinct to duck for cover.

"How's your blog going?"

The blog: the other bane of his existence, fitting that it came hand-in-hand with these torture sessions. John had managed an entry before coming in so she didn't have an excuse to harp on him for not posting.

"Yeah, good," he cleared his throat awkwardly before adding, "Very good."

"You haven't written a word, have you?"

He opened his mouth to argue, but decided against it. She could believe what she wanted. He glanced past her to the Newton's cradle resting on the desk behind her. John never understood why she kept it there. He would think that patients found the device too distracting. Which was perfectly fine for him, because John was always looking to distract himself from her scrutiny at these times.

John hadn't realized the device was in motion, because he could have sworn it was still when he came into the room. He watched as the shiny metal balls swung back and forth, back and forth, while Ella watched him. There was something soothing about the evenly-paced clicking, like listening to the metronome that used to sit on top of his mother's piano. Then for a moment, time seemed to freeze as the ball suspended in mid-air. But John blinked and it once again fell along its predestined parabolic arc.

He shook his head to clear it. He really wasn't getting enough sleep if his brain was trying to violate the laws of physics.

Ella scribbled something on her pad.

He pointed at the paper and said, "You just wrote 'still has trust issues'."

"And you read my writing upside down. D'you see what I mean?"

He smiled awkwardly. It probably came off more like a pained grimace.

"John, you're a soldier, and it's going to take you a while to adjust to civilian life; and writing a blog about everything that happens to you will honestly help you."

His mouth went dry. He thought back to the words he had written. When he repeated them, they were more for himself than for Ella. "Nothing ever happens to me."

Days later, John was starting to wish for nothing again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock tries to make tea and John finally notices something is amiss.

Sherlock started small. Mostly because there was no other option. Sherlock Holmes was not necessarily a patient man. The world was unbearably slow enough as it was (ugh, the people and their sluggish minds). Had it been possible for infants, Sherlock would have skipped that preliminary walking bit and gone straight to running (the better to escape Mycroft with).

It took him almost three days before he got a handle on grasping and lifting objects. Even then, he could barely move anything more than several centimeters at a time. The effort required on his part was also proportional to the size and mass of the target object. But lifting a mere pencil was enough to drain him for hours.

It was a strange sort of fatigue, like he was about to dissipate into mere molecules and just float away. At one point, he may have even blacked out. He may have even panicked over those missing hours (because time never went completely missing even when he was roaming his Mind Palace). But if he did, he must have subsequently deleted and let nothing behind but a very stern warning to himself not to overexert himself during experimentation.

Nudging, on the other hand, was far easier. The same could be said for tapping or any type of gesture that required short bursts of energy, rather than a prolonged concentration of effort.

His plans to deal with John also started small. First on his agenda was that hideous cane. It took Sherlock all night sometimes, but he made sure it was never where John had left it before going to bed. As Sherlock got better and better at moving things, he took to hiding the instrument in far more bizarre locations, rather than just displacing it by inches or even feet.

John was confused at first and then a bit suspicious. Yet he showed no other outward signs of panicking, which was good, or breaking down, which had been inconvenient to Sherlock (he would not want to be confined to some padded room in a psychiatric hospital). But the lack of reaction was maddening at the same time. John chose to approach each incident with unrelenting stoicism.

It made John dull, and it bothered Sherlock for other unclear reasons. Maybe because it felt like Sherlock was being ignored, which was admittedly something he never handled well— especially when he bloody well wanted that attention.

He needed John to react. Anything to bring back that spark from before.

So Sherlock was forced to up his game.

It had been a week since John's last session with his therapist (incompetent, completely wrong about the PTSD diagnosis). Sherlock supposed he had made extraordinary progress since. He can't be sure because he had no baseline for comparison. He had yet to run across another ghost or anything else like him.

While John was showering, Sherlock rummaged through the cupboards with impunity. He never thought he'd miss tea, but he did more that he apparently couldn't have any (an untested hypothesis he was seeing out to verify now). There were two boxes of generic brand tea bags: some unnamed black sludge and an English breakfast variety. He tossed those aside. Neither were the sort he would be caught drinking even if he was dead. The coffee was only marginally better: vanilla flavored Nescafe.

With the kettle boiling away (that took several tries and left the kettle with several new dents), Sherlock turned his attention to the milk in the refrigerator. The hardest part was opening the door and keeping it open long enough to take the milk out. Actions that should have taken him a minute to complete took five instead, and John was halfway done with his shower.

His growing irritation caused him to shred several tea bags and to tip the container of instant coffee mix over. The counter was a mini disaster area and there was no way John wasn't going to notice. Not unless he goes blind.

The water in the bathroom turned off and Sherlock's time was up. He went over to John's laptop, where the browser was open to a blank entry for his blog. He tapped lightly on the keys and left a message for his hauntee.

-x-x-x-

John froze in the middle of toweling his hair. His cupboard door hanging open and all its content tossed, with a particular viciousness aimed at his poor tea bags. Crumpled tea leaves littered his counter, along with several mugs filled with different levels of water and his half-full carton of milk that John last saw inside the refrigerator this morning.

Forced to play hide-and-seek with his cane was one thing. That was relatively easy to brush off. Hell, he was even willing to chalk that up to the PTSD. This was something else entirely. The last thing he needed was to be losing his mind (more than he already had).

A burglar then?

He double-checked the deadbolt on his door before going for his gun. There wasn't anywhere to hide in his tiny flat, but his one window was remarkably dodgy about staying locked. No signs of anyone having come or gone on the fire escape. He even checked under his bed for any intruder.

But his laptop, his only possession of value besides the SIG, was still sitting where he left it on the writing desk. He pulled open the top drawer to stow away his gun before he noticed it. The web browser was still open to his empty blog entry. Except the text box wasn't all that empty anymore.

  
_Get better tea. Surely you can spare the extra quid to buy something with actual flavor._  
 _SH_

Then almost like an afterthought:

_Apologies for the mess._

John gawked at the message. Whether it was because of the absurdity of the situation or the sheer cheek in the note, he laughed— harder and freer than he remembered doing at any time in the last few months. 

-x-x-x-

There was a certain fluidity to John Watson's face when he laughed. It was stunning and fascinating. John's mirth echoed through the small bedsit, amplified and magnified. The sound filled Sherlock with a warm and comforting glow. Only after the laughter died did he realize that he wanted to hear it again. Even more than that, he desired that small incredulous but undeniably fond smile with which John had regarded his message.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John masturbates and it's awkward for everyone (readers included) involved.

Sherlock was deep in contemplation of John's sock drawer (it was surprisingly hard to conceive a suitable index when there were all of ten pairs falling into either categories of "intact" and "has hole(s)") when a low groan broke the night's silence. Behind him, the tiny bed creaked as John moved against the mattress. Sherlock abandoned his efforts after the second groan.

John was prone to the occasional nightmare— the only real part of the PTSD diagnosis that really fit. He would toss and turn, clawing his way out of whatever mental anguish gripped him and back to the waking world. John rarely went back to sleep on those nights, choosing instead to stare blankly at his laptop or worse, his gun. Nights were Sherlock's least favorite time of the day (they used to be his favorite, all the crimes and London's teeming and unseemly underbelly); and not enough stimulation in this dull little bedsit. But nightmares were not his preferred method to have John awake and engaged again.

Sherlock moved closer to the bed. His perfect night vision allowed him to take in every detail of John's body tangled in the sheets: faint sheen of sweat, chest heaving up and down with a panting breath, eyes tightly squeezed shut against the faint moonlight that accentuated the crow's feet in the corner, hands fisted and tearing at the sheet trapping him, and other limbs thrown akimbo.

"John," he called, even though the other man would never hear him. It made him feel less helpless in the face of John's pain (which left Sherlock chilled nowadays).

A final thrash of limbs threw off the sheets and threadbare duvet, revealing the compact physique Sherlock had been studying over the last few days. Without the covers, it was impossible to miss the erection tenting John's pyjamas bottom.

It wasn't a bad dream.

It was a good dream— a really, really good dream.

He can tell that John was awake. The fluttering eyelashes and eye movements indicative of REM sleep had stilled. When his eyes fell open moments later, arousal colored them darker than the night itself. John licked his chapped lips, causing something foreign to stir within Sherlock.

"Fuck," John muttered to the ceiling as he flexed his hands.

Sherlock unwittingly echoed the sentiment.

If he still had a body (fluids and flesh and breath), the sight of John grabbing his waistband and shoving both the bottoms and the pants underneath down might have caused Sherlock's lung to falter. The fabric bunched low on John's thighs, and his cock stood both hard and proud once freed of its confine.

This wasn't the first time Sherlock had seen John with an erection. The blond man woke up with morning wood on occasion, but he always took care of it in the privacy of the shower. But never like this, completely out in the open and exposed to the full brunt of Sherlock's attention. He drifted closer to John, then reeling back once he realized what he was doing. Sherlock should look away. No matter what his thoughts on the concept of personal space, he was no pervert.

Then John took hold of his hefty erection and started stroking. Sherlock knew he was lost then.

For data, he tried to convince himself. It wasn't often that he got the chance to observe another adult male masturbate without inhibition.

After John licked a wet stripe across his palm, his hand started moving lazily up and down the shaft. Sherlock could tell that John favored a strong grip (the only thing that would make sense for a pair of steady and competent hands). John's T-shirt rode up, offering a tantalizing glimpse of his stomach (dark blond hair of his navel guiding line of sight back down to his cock and hints of muscle rebuilding courtesy of physical therapy). The bedsit was filled with the sound of the his labored breathing, impossibly loud and roaring in Sherlock's ears like waves breaking against the shore.

(He wanted to touch John; follow the trail painted by the navel hair with his tongue. This is insane. Insane. Insane. He was finally cracking under the pressure of being dead and stuck haunting this man [this unexpectedly desirable man].)

A desperate whimper escaped John's throat, and Sherlock flushed with heat before it pooled in his groin. He allowed the mad impulse to check himself for a ghostly erection to win out. He didn't have one.

Soon, John grew tired of the pace he'd set for himself and sped up his strokes. He pulled back the foreskin to reveal the glistening head, where a bead of precum balanced precariously as he moaned and arched into the touch. He swiped his thumb over the glans twice and his entire body shuddered wildly.

(Sherlock wanted to feel the weight of John's cock in his mouth; feel the throb of the vein pressed against his tongue; measure the pH of John's semen— taste the cum— it was all data he suddenly and desperately needed now.)

He could tell that John was getting close (his movements grew progressively jerkier and he'd started biting his lower lip). In the moment where the other man seized on the brink of his orgasm, something dark and almost shamed coiled in Sherlock's stomach. He should turn away, but he can't. He was trapped and frozen by John's blatant display. His head spun (he didn't need air; why was his chest heaving like he still did?). When John finally came, spurting hot jets over his abdomen, Sherlock feared he might finally shake apart from the desire coursing through him.

In the immediate aftermath of the orgasm, John's face was slack with bliss. It was a peaceful expression that Sherlock had never seen until now. And even more irrational than his desire to witness an encore was the daft compulsion to smooth out the remaining wrinkles between John's brows with the press of his lips.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock cockblocks from beyond the grave.

John couldn't believe it; he had a date for the evening. Somehow against all odds, he had a date!

This wasn't the first time someone had tried to set him up since returning to London. Both Harry and Clara had tried independently of one another. It was the first time he was excited about the prospect though.

John was good at dating— at least he thought he used to be. One didn't earn the nickname "Three-Continents-Watson" for nothing. Yet now that he found himself on the wrong side of thirty-five with a psychiatric diagnosis and no steady employment, it was all the more difficult not to doubt himself.

Mary Morstan was brilliant though. She could have been considered a catch before he had been injured and invalided out. Now? She shouldn't even be glancing in his direction more than once.

"So how do you know Bill?" When she smiled, the edge of her eyes would crinkle with good humor. John thought it endearing.

Talking about how Bill had saved his life when he started to bleed out after their medical convoy had been ambushed, while true, was not appropriate dinner date conversation. "Bill and I served together before I was invalided out." His eyes were drawn immediately to his cane leaning against their table. He just couldn't help himself.

"That makes sense." Despite the lightness of her words, there was a newfound tightness to her expression.

He wanted to kick himself. It was at times like this, he was reminded of what an ungrateful sod he could be. At least he had made it out. How many young men had he watch die under the knife without seeing home first? John had come home more or less intact. Unlike Mary's first husband, a soldier killed in action by an IRA bombing over a decade ago.

They were spared from having to make further awkward conversation by the arrival of the waiter— a skinny boy of a man that looked like he was fresh out of school. He fumbled his way through taking their orders, before returning again with a basket of bread that slid clear from one end of the table and over the edge of the other.  His face was completely red by the time he left the second basket and scurried off.

Once he was gone, John and Mary broke into a collective fit of giggling— completely devoid of the previous tension.

"We shouldn't laugh at the poor thing," she said between bouts of laughter. "You remember what it was like to be his age?" She partly smothered her mirth behind one hand and bent her head to allow her long blond hair to do the rest. The gold waterfall was set afire by the restaurant's lighting. John was entranced by the sight.

He could have spent all evening staring at her like this. He probably would have if his cane hadn't suddenly slipped and hit the ground with the loudest bang. He was mortified when Mary had to retrieve it for him, and he apologized profusely to the other diners nearby.

With the ice broken, they easily drifted in and out of conversation about London, embarrassing uni stories in solidarity with their awkward waiter, and Mary's job in the UCL library system. Not even the accidents that plagued their dining experience— like when the pepper shaker's top popped off mid-use and emptied half its content over Mary's entree, which the restaurant graciously remade free of charge— could dampen their good mood completely.

Mary was bullet-proof and she never let any of these incidents get her down for long. It made John insanely envious of her fortitude. As the evening passed, they slid closer and closer together in the half-circle booth until their knees were pressed together. John liked to think the electricity he felt was not just his half-starved libido.

"Please don't take this the wrong way," her long eyelashes fluttered against the ridge of her cheeks as she looked coyly at him out of the corner of her eyes. "Or think I'm too forward, but would you like to come to my place for coffee?"

John could hardly believe what he was hearing. Maybe coffee was no longer an euphemism for sex? Then again, an invitation to actual after-dinner drinks was more than he expected. Better than going back to his dingy bedsit alone. When he found his voice again, he tried not to stutter as he replied, "I would love too."

"Just let me pop into the ladies' room and we can be on her way." She pointed to the restroom just a few feet behind them and slid out of her seat.

Another passing waiter had paused to let her out of her seat first. But as she began to stand, John watched with horror as the glass of red wine resting on the waiter's tray suddenly jostled and tipped over. He knew exactly what was going to happen, but was powerless as the liquid poured down the front of Mary's blouse. She shrieked when the glass subsequently collided with the floor and shattered.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" The waiter exclaimed. "Let me get you some napkins."

"It's okay. I'll just use the restroom." If her expression was anything to go by, Mary's good mood had finally broken.

John sighed as she snatched up her purse and vanished behind the restroom door with a slam. There went his evening.

-x-x-x-

Mary swore loudly before dumping her purse on the sink counter. She checked the two stalls to make sure they were empty before locking the restroom door. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, hand trailing down her front as she began unbuttoning her stained blouse.

She felt a bit cursed. She liked John a lot— he was sweet, caring, and funny. It had been such a good evening so far, but all these... things just kept happening. At first, she wondered if she was being paranoid. But she felt those cold shivers like invisible fingers running across the back of her neck or trailing up her arms. Then there was the feeling that someone or something had been staring at her all night.

It hadn't felt friendly in the least.

But now, after the wine glass? She felt targeted.

A loud crash coming from behind made her jump in surprise. She spun around, her shirt still half-unbuttoned, to find the left stall door swinging on its hinge.

"Come on, Mary. Calm down," she muttered to herself.

When she turned back to the counter, she saw that she had knocked over her purse and emptied its content all over the tiled floor. She bent over to retrieve her belongings and stuffed them back into her bag. As she worked, the lights overhead flickered and went dark.

"Dammit!"

Other than the light coming in from the space under the restroom door, there were no other light sources to illuminate the room. She groped around the walls until she felt a light switch.

"Mary, is everything okay?" John asked from the other side of the door.

"I'm fine." She tried to keep her voice steady and flicked the switch, flooding the room with light once more. She spotted her missing tube of lipstick— her lucky color, Pink Bamboo, which she had worn tonight because she had a good feeling— sitting upright and innocuously on the counter before seeing the words written in mauve above it.

Mary wasn't a superstitious or suspicious person by nature, but she couldn't stop shaking when she grabbed her purse and ran.

-x-x-x-

John leaned heavily against his cane, squeezing the handle tightly when Mary finally re-emerged from the ladies' washroom. Her face was as white as a sheet— her pallor only made worse by the contrast of the red stain that she hadn't even tried to wash out of her cream blouse.

"What's wrong?" He asked with a sinking heart.

Without saying a word, she marched by him. Her entire being was wracked with full-body shivers, goosebumps dotting every inch of her exposed skin. She plucked her coat up, threw it on, and headed for the exit. Finally realizing she meant to leave, John hobbled after her until he caught her coat sleeve. The pull on her clothing caused her to thrash and tear herself violently from his grip. She scrambled frantically away from him, barely looking at her surroundings until she ran into another table nearby.

"Mary?"

"Stay the hell away from me!"

"What's happening?" He tried to take another step closer, but she dodged behind the table to put some distance between them. The couple seated there looked up at both of them in bewilderment.

"Don't come near me! I don't know what kind of game you're trying to play, John Watson, but if I ever see you again, I'm calling the police." With those last words, she turned and fled the restaurant.

John was left standing mortified once more in a room full of gawking customers. He didn't understand what had happened? What was Mary so terrified of? Him? He clenched his jaw and squared his shoulders, ignoring all the speculative whispering that followed him. One of the waiters tried to stop him from going into the ladies' restroom Mary had previously barricaded herself in, but he ducked and weaved expertly around the man.

He shivered and he could almost see his next exhalation. The restroom felt at least ten degrees chiller than the rest of the restaurant. The reason for Mary's sudden terror quickly became abundantly clear. Scrawled messily on the mirror over the sink were five words.

**STAY AWAY FROM JOHN WATSON.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock brings John and Mike Stamford together.

Another week, another awkward session with Ella.

They spent the first fifteen minutes just staring at one another. She was waiting for him to make the first move. John usually resisted doing so out of stubbornness. Plus there was the fact he hasn't updated his blog in a while. He hadn't updated for the same reason he didn't want to speak today.

If he opened his mouth or stated writing an entry, he would end up talking about the only thing happening to him nowadays: his invisible stalker person/thing. When nothing further happened after the mysterious SH broke in and left that message on his laptop, John had assumed it was over. (He had hoped it was over, even if he couldn't shake the feeling there was always someone watching or following him— all known symptoms of his current diagnosis.) But then last night with Mary happened and he woke up this morning to find his laptop turned on with another note.

  
_She was dull. Couldn't take a harmless prank._   
_SH_

Unlike the last note, this one filled him with dread. "She" could only be referring to Mary, and somehow leaving a threatening message in a locked ladies' washroom didn't seem like a harmless prank.

A thorough search of his bedsit didn't turn up any further clues. No bugs or surveillance equipment of any sort. Whoever he or she was, they moved in and out of his flat like a ghost.

Coupled with the other odd things that continued to take place around him, he had to admit he wasn't in a good place— mentally.

At the end of the hour, Ella assigned him a writing assignment for his blog with a heavy sigh. John escaped as quickly as he could and headed toward the nearby Russell Square Park. Fresh air would help. Maybe he was spending too much time cooped up in the bedsit.

He hobbled past a chubby man sitting on a park bench, internally cursing his damn leg.

"John? John Watson?" Someone called.

He was tempted to keep walking. In fact, he had made up his mind to ignore whoever it was and picked up his pace as much as he could manage when a sudden force yanked him back. Balance upset, he fell flat on his arse. John twisted around to glare at the person who made him fall. But there was no one behind him, just the chubby man previously seated on the bench now standing several feet away and gaping at John.

Another beat passed before the other man rushed forward and offered John a hand. He took it reluctantly and allowed the man to help him up.

"You okay, mate?" The man asked.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Thank you."

The other man continued to smile, full of obvious expectation. John, on the other hand, stared blankly, not knowing what this man wanted.

The man slapped his chest jovially. "Stamford. Mike Stamford. We were at Barts together."

Recognition finally kicked in. Mike from uni. Mike from his classes. Mike, who fancied Harry for a bit.

"Yes, sorry, yes, Mike," he took the offered hand and shook it. "Hello, hi."

"Yeah, I know. I got fat!"

Mike was rounder than John remembered. The full-faced smile hasn't changed despite the years. "No."

"I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at. What happened?"

John swallowed compulsively around the sudden lump in his throat. "I got shot."

Mike automatically glanced at the cane before diverting his gaze with a guilty expression. John wasn't entirely sure why he then agreed to coffee with Mike. Maybe he was lonelier than he cared to admit.

-x-x-x-

John was acquainted with Mike Stamford. It made sense as there weren't that many teaching hospitals in London, and John did train in London (that much was obvious from his reluctance to move away from the city, despite his continuously shrinking finance if the increased proliferation of baked beans and bread in the cupboards were any indication).

There was no way Sherlock was going to let John just ignore Stamford. Not after that exceedingly tedious dinner date last night with Mary Morstan (no, Sherlock was at least owed the possibility of a trip to Barts after enduring their sickening flirting and her high, obnoxious giggling that set his teeth on edge— honestly, he couldn't understand why John was so upset; if anything, he should be thanking Sherlock for running off that boring, boring, boring librarian).

Sherlock followed as they got coffee from the nearby Criterion cafe and returned to the park bench. He tuned out most of their obligatory catching up conversation and focused on discreetly pawing through Stamford's satchel (students' papers and the two recent, dogeared issues of the Lancet). When Stamford offered to give John a tour, Sherlock didn't bother to contain his whoop of glee. Oh, how he had missed the clean straight lines of his lab. Even if he couldn't use the equipment, touching and tracing the contours would be enough for now.

But John hesitated, obviously caught between his self-pity and curiosity. Sherlock flicked the man's ear, causing him to yelp indignantly. But it drew John out of his head long enough to accept the offer.

On their way into the old pathology building, they passed Lestrade. John and Lestrade's gazes met for the briefest second before sliding past one another without recognition. Lestrade looked terrible too (two-day-old shirt wrinkled; hair disheveled; dark bags under his eyes; pulled an all-nighter at the Yard; arguing with his wife again [she was cheating again, with the gym teacher this time]; still running into a brick wall over the serial murder cases [if the killer stuck to his previously established timeline, there should be a new body turning up in a week]; just came from the morgue). There wasn't enough time to deduce anything further, as Lestrade rounded a corner and John dragged him inside the building.

"Dammit, John. I've told you a number of times to not just see, but to observe," he snapped irritably, despite the fact he never got an answer.

That was another habit that developed of late: holding one-sided conversations with John. Most of the time, Sherlock gave his deductions about the people John met in daily life or the particularly interesting ones they would pass on the street. He especially enjoyed dissecting Ella's misguided reasoning and assessments about John. It wasn't that much different from when he used to talk his way through cases at his skull (did Mycroft have it now, or had he thrown it away? He never approved). And sometimes mid-diatribe, John would tilt his head and strain his ears to catch whispers of something.

When that happened, Sherlock felt less isolated.

Inside the hospital, Sherlock's senses sharpened in a sudden kaleidoscope of sensations. Combined with the all-too-bright lighting, the smell of antiseptic threatened to overwhelm him. The incessant beeping of an electrocardiogram monitor persisted like white noise in the background— even though not a single one of the devices were in the immediate area.

A buzzing sensation started in the base of his spine, before crawling up to combine with the sudden pressure squeezing Sherlock's head. The sensation of pain was the most surprising part. Pain had not been a previous affliction of his condition— not since he expired in the back of that ambulance. Even when he pushed himself too far, he merely blacked out without preamble.

The beeping from the ECG sped up, mapping the rapid heartbeat running away like a freight train. He looked toward John, who had moved further down the hallway with Stamford and well beyond the fifteen feet range Sherlock was normally restricted to. It felt like he was being torn into two— stretched over the impossibility of existing concurrently in two disparate locations.

"John?" He called in a trembling voice from his parched and disused throat. "John!"

The world seized in a flash of white light and a storm of grainy images (John jerked to a sudden stop; a pair of hands pushed him back into the mattress; Stamford looking at John with visible concern; the needle of a syringe [nine gauge, medical grade] plunged into his arm...).

"Get Doctor Harris in here now!"

"John, you okay? You look pale all of a sudden."

"He's seizing. Code blue, he's about to crash any second."

Klaxons screamed from all directions. He couldn't _think_ with all this noise!

"Nothing, Mike, just a sudden chill."

The cold pulled at Sherlock, inviting him to sink into it.

"Clear!"

The ECG monitor had fallen silent.

"Come on, I'll show you the morgue. We can relive the good old days of dissection."

Something in Sherlock's chest jumped and shuddered violently. The feeling that could only be described as the universe trying to tear him apart at the molecular level returned, except it was a thousand times worse than anything before. All he knew was that he wasn't ready to leave. Not now. Not yet.

"Doctor, he's stabilizing."

When Sherlock regained awareness, he stood over a rack of shattered test tubes with no recollection of how he got there in the first place.

-x-x-x-

"A bit different from my day." John declared as he entered the laboratory.

Mike grinned. "Yeah, they finally got around to replacing all that equipment from the sixties a few years ago. They're spoiling the new generation!"

A sudden cold chill swept across the room, and both he and Mike shivered. "Drafty as hell in here though." John could see the wispy trail of his own exhalation. He wrapped his jacket tighter around his body. God, it was times like this that made him miss the climate in Afghanistan.

"The heater must be broken. I'll let maintenance know." Mike frowned at the wall thermostat that indicated a temperature of almost five degrees. He turned to head for the door.

Suddenly, the distinct sound of shattering glass sent John scrambling for the sidearm he didn't technically own any more in a holster he no longer wore. Mike jumped almost a foot into the air, clutching one hand to his chest and the other on the door handle to maintain his balance. But there was no threat in sight. Just a rack of broken test tubes sitting on a nearby table. The lab's blue-tinted lighting refracted off the pile of glass shards scattered across the tabletop— making them appear like diamonds.

The man that John then saw standing over the same table— tall and thin, curly dark hair, and decked out in a sharp suit— must have been another trick of the light. The man turned, looked right at John, and mouthed something unheard. But then Mike approached the table, passing straight through the apparition. It wavered and vanished.

Mike made a noise of disapproval. "Someone must have been playing a prank with these test tubes. These young things, I swear I hate them all." Though he looked up and said the latter while attempting good humor.

John stood rooted to his spot. His mind was whirling. He had seen that man before; the one he had tried to save weeks ago. He should have realized it sooner. None of these strange occurrences started until after that fateful night. It should be impossible. But the only other explanation was that he had well and truly lost his mind. John didn't feel crazy!

"John, what's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Poor Mike had no idea just how right he was.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they dream (together).

Sherlock was annoyed— no, he was well beyond that. He was bloody infuriated. Just when John was finally beginning to notice (to observe!), he couldn't do anything to respond and confirm suspicions.

After a stilted apology to Stamford, John flew out of the lab like a bat out of hell (well, if that bat had one broken wing— but he had hobbled away impressively fast given the limp). He headed straight for the nearest handicapped lavatory and locked the door behind him. Sherlock watched as John wrenched the tap on and plunged his face into the sink. The blond man pulled back, staring at his reflection in the mirror as the water dripped from his chin.

Indecision dominated John's features for several moments before he cleared his throat and spoke, "Uh, mate, I don't suppose that if you're still there, you could give me a sign? Maybe let me know what it is that you want? Why you're haunting me?"

Sherlock found that he could not. Whatever had happened at the hospital (the flashes of black and white with urgent voices speaking words that didn't fully process) had sapped him of his remaining strength. He couldn't even nudge a ball if his non-life depended on it.

"You saw me," he tried talking to the former soldier, "Surely, you can do that again."

No indication that he had heard Sherlock at all. Typical.

"Right, talking to myself. Definitely not going mad," John muttered derisively to himself.

But John had not brushed off the realization— not entirely. Sherlock followed John to the nearest public library where the other man spent the hours until closing time reading up on paranormal activity. John and himself by proxy became increasingly frustrated with the varying quality of the accounts they read. There was no simple or even integrated theory to be considered.

Even well into the night, Sherlock had yet to regain his strength. He still had the occasional mini-blackout that lost minutes at a time.

Now John slept, unresponsive and utterly dead to the world. Sherlock was beyond bored, having long processed the data from their library trip (too many variables— too many unknown factors— there were common themes with "unfinished business" being the most prevalent— what was his unfinished business?— the serial killer perhaps).

Around 4AM, John started tossing and turning. Nightmares, probably brought on the the events of the day.

Sherlock folded himself onto the empty spot on the bed and sighed, "Wake up, John. You're no good to anyone if you're cranky and disturbed in the morning."

He tried to wake the man with the sheer force of his will. Nothing happened, which was sadly expected. Had he the strength, he would have gently shaken John to consciousness like the other two times he'd done so. He jabbed his index finger into John's forehead in frustration. Caught by surprise, Sherlock was unequipped to fight the force that yanked him down into the darkness again.

When the darkness fell away, the glaring sun overhead temporally blinded him. But it did nothing to block out the ratta-tat-tat of assault rifles being fired.

-x-x-x-

The world ground to an unexpected halt. The cacophony of artillery shelling vanished, and John looked up to see Murray just feet away with his open mouth frozen in a silent shout. "Watson," he was about to scream in that instance just before the bullet that ended John's army career tore through his shoulder. John turned, bumping his helmet awkwardly to the side, and found said bullet suspended in the air. 

Even though the world had stopped moving and screaming, he could still feel the hot desert sun beating down on the back of his neck along with the smell of blood and gunpowder.

"I'm dreaming..." he muttered to himself.

"It would appear so." A new voice shattered the quiet hell to pieces.

John pivoted toward the source. It was him, the ghost from earlier... The man who had died in John's care... 

"This was how you were shot. Your comrades were laying suppression fire, but you broke cover when one of them was caught in a nearby grenade explosion. You were trying to pull him to safety."

As the stranger narrated the events John knew all too well, his attention drifted to the young lieutenant bleeding out on the floor— a gaping wound where the grenade had taken off a chunk of his leg. Lieutenant Parker would live, but they would amputate the leg completely. The tall dark ghost, SH, glided around John and plucked the frozen bullet out of the air. He turned it over several times, studying it with a focus John had never seen in another human being before.

"This is the source of the scar on your shoulder. It was most likely 7.62 mm caliber— that is the most popular caliber among military sniper weapons. Bolt action rifle, I'm guessing a M21, part of the arsenals the US sold to its Islamic allies in the sixties." SH tossed the bullet to John, who caught it on reflex. The tall man— ghost— whatever he was— SH squinted at some unseen point in the distance before speaking again, "Given the bullet's trajectory— if the accuracy of your unconscious mind is to be believed— and a maximum effective range of 800 meters, the shooter was situated on the roof of that building."

Everything rewound, and their surroundings dissolved in a whirlwind of colors. The rush of heat and fire from the previous grenade explosion collapsed back into itself like it was caught in the gravity well of a black hole. The bullet in John's hand grew warm, then scorching hot. He hissed and let go, watching as the bullet flew back. When the world ceased spinning like one of those carnival rides from John's youth, they stood on a roof over an Afghan insurgent lying on his stomach and staring through the scope of a sniper rifle propped over the roof's edge.

"Who are you?" John asked breathlessly. "Are you a figment of my imagination?"

"Don't be ridiculous, John. Your mind, though above average, would be incapable of processing this level of detail."

Had John not already been gobsmacked, he would have been insulted.

"You know my name, how do you know that? No, wait, of course you know it. I'm getting sass from my own subconscious." John shook his head in disbelief.

The stranger straightened to his full height— an impressive six-foot-one— and launched into a sudden rant full of energy. "I also know you’re an Army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him— possibly because he’s an alcoholic; more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic— quite correctly, I’m afraid."

John's mouth fell open in face of the deluge of words.

"You see your therapist every Wednesday. You sit there until she makes the first move, usually to ask about the blog she's having you keep. You never share anything of emotional significance and she knows it— you're not paying attention to her about 70% of the time— too busy staring at the Newton's cradle on her desk and feeling perturbed over the layout of her office. That should be enough proof that I've been around you for several weeks now."

"That... was amazing!" John blurted out; he couldn't help himself.

SH jerked his head up, startled. In this angle of sunlight, his eyes appeared almost green. "What? You think so?"

"Yes, extraordinary— no, wait, no. You made it sound brilliant. Wait, it's me making it sound brilliant. I'm a lot smarter than I get credit for."

The other man growled from low in his chest— a sound of pure frustration. "The evidence has been plainly before you this entire time. I'm the one that's been moving that cane of yours around, trying to break you of your dependency on it. The tea, the strange noises, your shifting belongings— those were all my doing. I left you notes. I signed them. You've been wondering about what really happened to Mary in the lavatory— that was my doing as well."

"I'm not saying that my life hasn't been strange as of late. I'm just not convinced that you're really a ghost haunting me. There are less pleasant explanations that make far more sense. For one thing, I'm fairly sure that this," John gestured vaguely in the space between them and then outward to their surrounding. "Has never happened before. I'd think I'd remember dreaming about a madcap bastard like you."

SH scowled. "Categorically untrue. Human beings dream far more than they tend to remember when they're awake. But you're right, this dream connection is new."

"Look at it from my point of view," John considered just how mad he must be to even be entertaining a debate with what might be a figment of his imagination in the first place. "I was convinced I saw a ghost earlier today and then spent a better part of the day reading up on the subject. Now that ghost is visiting me in my dreams? Even you must see why I'm thinking you're really my subconscious trying to convince the other parts of my mind that you're real and I'm not actually losing my mind. Because it makes sense that if my mind made you up, you'd know everything I know about myself. So telling me things that I would logically already know isn't going to convince me otherwise."

The other man's scowl appeared to deepen, but it did nothing to take away from the regal quality of his facial features. Christ, why had it taken until now for John to notice just how gorgeous this man was. If SH was a figment of his imagination, John had to give it props for coming up with a body like that.

"You make a surprisingly valid point," SH conceded after a moment.

Smugness bloomed in John's chest. He got the feeling that most people didn't often pull one over on someone like SH. "Told you so. You'd have to tell me about things I can't possibly know, like about you when you were still aliv—"

"My name is Sherlock Holmes," the ghost cut in.

"Okay, now I know you're pulling my leg."

Sherlock's glare intensified to the point where John thought it might actually drill a hole in him. "I suppose my parents should have given me a more pedestrian name like John. If anything, this will help prove my case— you won't find many other Sherlock Holmes when you go looking. I’m a _consulting_ detective. Only one in the world. I invented the job."

"What does that even mean?"

"It means when the police are out of their depth, which is always, they consult me. I also run a website called 'The Science of Deduction,' where I take private cases— if they prove interesting enough."

"Okay, fine. But if you've been with me the whole, since the night you died, why didn't you reveal yourself before today?"

Sherlock began pacing and kicked up clouds of dust in his wake. Around them, their dreamscape shifted again and settled on the laboratory at St. Barts. The ghost paused in front of the table where John had seen Sherlock earlier.

"What happened today was an anomaly. Further research is required, but I believe something... happened while we were at Barts, something I had no control over. That was when you saw me. You've never given any indication of being able to see or hear me before this afternoon, despite all my efforts to the contrary."

"Okay, fine. But if you can do all that stuff you claimed you can, moving my things and scaring Mary half to death, why didn't you do anything earlier? I tried talking to you. I asked you to give me a sign if you were there."

Sherlock's face twisted in an fascinating study of palpable frustration. "I tried, but I couldn't. Whatever happened at the hospital drained me of my energy reserve and I was unable to affect the physical world. I wanted to prove that Stamford got it right with his offhand comment. You must believe me."

He didn't know why, but John did. He had no reason to, but John did believe him. 

Sherlock took him by his shoulders and looked straight in his eyes. He was standing far too close to be socially acceptable, yet John didn't mind. Though, he was momentarily stunned by the warmth radiating from the ghost. It almost felt as if he was still alive.

Sherlock's grip tightened marginally when he spoke, "John, there's no guarantee you'll remember this dream when you wake up. I've no clue when I will regain my strength or if this experience can be repeated. So you need to try your best to remember when you wake up. You need to look me up and prove to yourself that I exist. I'm here. I'm real. My name is Sherlock Holmes."

John nodded dumbly.

As the sun rose, he awoke with the half-formed impressions of a rambling conversation, brilliant gray eyes, the scent of formaldehyde, and the name "Sherlock Holmes" on his lips.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they open the lines of communication.

_I think I've lost my mind._

That was what John had written before he crawled into bed the previous night. The one-sentence entry remained saved as a draft in his blog. He deleted the sentence and typed in something else.

_There's a ghost haunting me._

Yeah, no, absolutely not. At least the previous one sounded self-aware and not completely out of touch with reality. Ella was reading the bloody thing and he shuddered to think of their next session after admitting something like that publicly. She would probably start talking about "magical thinking" again and John already had quite enough of that lecture.

He flipped over to the other tab, which was opened to a website called "The Science of Deduction," the first result when you plugged Sherlock Holmes into a search engine. (He was a bit surprised he got the spelling right on the first try.) But there was no photo— on the website or anywhere else online— nothing that could confirm or deny the half-remembered facial features and grey eyes from John's dream.

The statement on the front page stared back at John, almost as if mocking him.

 

>  When I've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth.

His bedsit had been quiet all morning. No jittery tapping, no abrupt rustling of cloth, no skidding of a ceramic mug across a wooden surface, none of the strange little oddities he had become used to over the last few weeks. When he woke up, his cane was leaning against the frame of his sad single bed— just where it had been left the night before. He had no idea how many of these little things he had willfully written off until they stopped happening.

Chair legs scraped against the floor as John pushed away from the writing desk. The noise was brief and ephemeral, doing nothing to fill the emptiness of the room. He grabbed his cane and hobbled out of the flat. He was going to be late.

-x-x-x-

Sherlock sighed and stared at the back of John's head. He preferred to study the other man's face, but shifting around was going to be problematic. John just had to take the tube...

People generally avoided walking through or standing in the same spot where Sherlock stood, like they could sense his presence somehow even if they didn't consciously register it. It could make for an interesting, though ultimately uncomfortable experiment. But in a crowded areas like a tube carriage during a weekend rush hour, there just wasn't enough room. Other people's body parts and _things_ skewered out of Sherlock's incorporeal form. The neck of uni student's guitar case (he wasn't any good at it; mainly took it to parties to pull gullible girls) bisected half of his head, until all he could see was the black canvas of the bag. When he tried to duck under it, he ended up halfway inside the back of a rather tall dentist hygienist. Then the faint tickle of a single mother's (thankfully sans the child, who was with a babysitter) arm and the five-pound handbag hanging off it rammed through his neck and upper torso so she could grab hold of a pole.

Maybe he was better off riding along outside of the damn carriage.

So distracted by the various limbs sticking through him, he didn't notice John had gotten off at the stop until he felt that familiar tug in his chest.

On the station platform, the throng parted around him and allowed him to easily catch up with John again. He pressed close against the other man, almost ready to fall into his body, as they maneuvered through the streets. When John shivered intermittently, Sherlock wondered if it was because he could feel him.

John ducked into a restaurant about three blocks away from the tube stop. According to John's text, he was supposed to meet his brother for lunch. Sherlock scanned the restaurant for the man who was related to John. He frowned. None of the men in the room looked like they could be John's immediate family.

Suddenly, an arm loaded with shiny bangle bracelets shot up in the air. "John!"

Sherlock's insides froze like ice water. Was this a setup? Had Harry set up his brother with some woman? Well, that was obnoxious and just when Sherlock lack the strength to chase the her off. He and John had more important things to do than go on a blind-date!

John stopped just short of the table where the woman rose from her chair and put her arms around him. John's shoulders were tense and drawn back— he didn't want to be embraced. Sherlock growled and tried to bat her hands (with obnoxiously bright rings adorning almost every finger) away. His hands predictably just passed through them, leaving him feeling both annoyed and discombobulated. 

Good, the two of them were smiling awkwardly at each other once they separated. Going through the tedious rigmorale of social expectations then. Sherlock sneered at the scene before him.

"You don't have to be nice to her, John." Sherlock's words fell on deaf ears though.

They sat down at the table (just two seats, no place for the brother) and regarded each other silently. From his perch over John's shoulder, Sherlock glared at the blond woman at the opposite end. A waiter approached the table and took drink orders (just water for John, a diet Coke for her).

John then broke the staring contest, "How are you, Harry?"

She sighed (artist [medium: paint and occasionally sculpting], fickle personality, blond hair, the same nose as John, signs of long-term alcoholic abuse but sober at the moment, a brand new mobile sitting by her plate). "Really, John, is that your opener? You can just come right out and ask me."

"You stopped drinking, how long?"

"Three weeks."

"That's good."

"Yeah, I thought so."

Harry was short of Harriet. Sister! A sister! Not brother! Sherlock would be mad at himself for missing that— if only he wasn't so busy being stupidly relieved for some reason.

-x-x-x-

The awkward lunch was followed by an awkward shopping trip. One of Clara's nephews had a fifth birthday coming up and Harry, for whatever reason, was bent on getting him a gift. Harry insisted that the shopping was better in Central London. She claimed to have no idea what five-year old boys like, which was why John just had to come along.

He didn't know what was more pathetically transparent: Harry's attempt to get him out of his bedsit or her furtive attempt to keep tabs on Clara (even though Harry was the one to walk away first).

The sheer array and number of toys stocking the shelves at Hamleys was stunning. John was sure half the options, or even the technology that made them possible, wasn't around when he was a kid. Harry was over in the next aisle looking at displays of toy cars. She had been suffocating— hovering. Which was why John was (hiding— no, avoiding) in the board game aisle. He diverted his attention from all the newfangled games, the ones with buttons to push and remotes to control little intricate parts that would be inevitably broken within a week of unboxing.

There was still Cluedo, chess, checkers, backgammon, and other classics John remembered fondly from his childhood. His eyes then fell on an Ouija board, and he thought of playing over at a friend's house in Year Five and hiding in the attic as four of them bent over the board asking questions. Ouija boards became sadly less diverting as you grew older and learned that it was all psychophysiological.

So did the occult in general, now that John thought about it.

But then... He stared harder at the Ouija board. Then again, he was supposedly haunted (by the ghost of an arrogant prat claiming to be the world's only consulting detective). This is what you did right, when you were haunted? All the movies and books said so. Why mess with the classics now? John sure wasn't going to hire a medium. He didn't have the money to throw away at that.

His hands twitched as a preamble to reaching out for the box.

An short but angry buzz cut him off, startling him into a small jump. The sound came from behind him. After a few moments of searching, he pinpointed a toy with a hole cut into the box with a big red arrow and "Try me!" pointing at the button within. He pressed it.

_Buzz._

Mmmm, maybe it was broken. Or...

John turned back to the Ouija board and raised a hand toward it.

_BUZZ!_

The aisle was empty, surprisingly devoid of customers on a busy shopping weekend. But John still glanced up and down the lane furtively before hissing, "Sherlock, is that you?"

_Buzzzz buzz buzzzz buzzz. Buzz. Buzz buzz buzz._

John suppressed a grin upon recognizing the cadence within the cacophony. Morse code: _Yes_.

"We have got to find a better way of communicating."

-·-- · ··· (Yes)

"The board would be less obnoxious."

-· --- (No)

"For me, yeah."

No code this time, just a prolonged depression of the button and angry noise to express Sherlock's displeasure.

"Okay, okay, you made yourself perfectly clear."

\--· --- --- -·· (Good)

"John, who are you talking to?"

He pivoted around to meet Harry's curious glance, and a part of his mind registered how smooth the movement was. "No one," he said, pausing and then adding, "No one at all." He tried not to laugh out loud at the absurdity of his situation.

Harry narrowed her eyes in suspicion, but she didn't pursue the matter any further. She held up two firetrucks that appeared nearly identical in every aspect beside size. John did not like this "game," never did growing up and well into his early adulthood. Harry clearly thought one was superior to the other, for whatever reason, but she always insisted on asking for a second opinion. God help you if you chose wrong though. John didn't want to choose wrong now either.

His first instinct was to go with the larger one in Harry's right hand.

"Well, what do you think?" Harry's forehead began to pinch with irritation. Tick tock, her face said.

Oh God, if John took too long to answer, it was going to be worse than guessing wrong. Damn Harry.

A ghostly (ghost's) caress brushed against his left cheek, then a firm tap like fingers on the back of his left hand. It felt like a hint. John pointed to the smaller toy in Harry's left hand. "That one."

A smile blossomed over his sister's face. She was pleased with his response. She spun around and exited the aisle with both toys.

"Thanks," John said to the air, not caring if he looked like a loon anymore.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which actively living with a ghost changes nothing (everything) for John.

"Your mood is showing a marked improvement this week. Would you like to talk about it?" Ella asked. Her ever-present notepad rested in her lap, turned to a clean page and ready to dissect John for another session. Behind her back, Sherlock shuffled the things on her desk from one side to the other. To what end? John didn't know. At least it was something to look at whenever he got tired of Ella's face.  
  
John admitted, that for the first time since Afghanistan, his life felt full. It had been as if his time had been paused since he first returned and he had lived out of sync with the rest of the world until now. The world was less gray than it once was. And while he still needed his cane to walk, his leg ached outright less often.  
  
Ella watched him expectantly, still waiting for a response.  
  
He shrugged belatedly in response to her question. "Things are just better."  
  
"Tell me about what's happened since we last met."  
  
"I acquired a..." John struggled to find the right description. "Flatmate."  
  
She looked up sharply. "This is unexpected. Have you moved somewhere new?"  
  
"No, no, he more or less moved in with me. He didn't have anywhere else to go."  
  
Not that Sherlock could get away even if he tried. They had vigorously tested Sherlock's range. According to Sherlock, the range had grown since he first became attached to John, but it still didn't afford him the degree is freedom he would have liked.  
  
"You must be close friends if you're taking him in like this."  
  
"Uh, not really. We met a few weeks ago."  
  
 _You know, while he was bleeding out on the pavement,_ John thought wryly.  
  
He wasn't sure what exact expression he had on his face then, but it prompted her pen to fly across the paper. Too bad she finally figured out how to best angle it away from him to keep him from reading her writing. "Tell me more about your new flatmate. Are you getting along?"  
  
John continued, "He's quiet."  
  
Unless he was drumming out entire symphonies against the pipes at three in the bloody morning.  
  
"I get the sense he's a bit anti-social."  
  
John quickly learned that Sherlock nursed a healthy measure of disdain for most things and he wasn't afraid to give voice to those opinions. Even when he didn't have an actual voice. On bad days, Sherlock did little more than spew written vitriol through John's computer. The record had to be that time he got banned from ten consecutive internet forums within five posts each.  
  
"But he's also a bit of a child."  
  
 _I'm bored, John!_ Sherlock would type into the laptop that John had taken to leaving on at all hours of the day.  
  
Sometimes, John found himself wishing the man was still alive. Just so he could kill him a second time for being a gigantic prat. The urge never lasted for long though. Even when Sherlock hogged his computer for hours without end, leaving John with little else to entertain himself. Even when Sherlock derided him for typing too slowly or called him stupid ( _Don't be like that, John. Almost everyone's an idiot._ )  
  
"But he seems to tolerate me well enough."  
  
John was struck by the sudden and grim thought that Sherlock could have (and still could) killed him. Being a ghost already, he could easily get away with it and there was really nothing John could do to defend against it. It may even give Sherlock the freedom he so obviously desired. Then he realized the reason this hadn't occurred to him sooner was because it never crossed his mind that Sherlock may want to hurt him.  
  
John still didn't think Sherlock would hurt him. He had faith in Sherlock.  
  
Ella smiled encouragingly. "Frustration is perfectly normal in these cases. It can take some getting used to— living with another person again."  
  
"I'm glad actually. I like it," John admitted quietly. "At least I'm never bored." How could he be? He was living with a mad, brilliant ghost.  
  
She continued talking— something about coping mechanisms or another, but John only half-listened. His thoughts drifted back to Sherlock again. John had more or less adapted seamlessly to Sherlock's active presence in his life. Not much changed afterwards, except for everything that did. For one, John developed the habit of talking aloud to Sherlock, which was fine inside the flat. But outside? It was the sort of behavior that was prone to draw odd looks when he was out and about.  
  
At first, they spent a lot of time inside the flat with Sherlock doing online research about the paranormal. But they both quickly grew agitated under confinement, self-imposed or otherwise. So when Sherlock began tearing the bedsit apart, John knew it was time to go for a walk.  
  
Communicating outside the flat, on the other hand, could be difficult. John refused to carry his laptop with him everywhere. The best they managed was when he held out or laid out his mobile for Sherlock to send a text message. Otherwise, they saved all the "talking" until they got back to the flat or settled for more rudimentary forms of communication. It should bother John more: the ghostly touches that guided John to whatever Sherlock wanted to point out.  
  
A lot of things should bother John more than they actually did.  
  
Ella didn't let him leave the session without a warning though. "John, I think this is a very optimistic sign of your progress, but you have to be careful not to overextend yourself. Don't make any commitments you're not ready for. Do not allow this person to take advantage of your good nature. You are still your own first priority at the end of the day."  
  
Back home, John's first order of business was to make tea. Behind him, he heard the keyboard clacking. When his tea was ready, John took up his mug and sat down in his now customary seat next to the other chair directly in front of the laptop.

> _That was the most I've ever seen you talk in therapy._

"You do require a bit of an explanation."

> _You must know that I tolerate you not only because I must._

A grin bloomed across John's lips and warmth in his chest. Maybe the latter part was because of the tea. "Are you saying you enjoy having me around?"  
  
The cursor remained stationary and blinking for several beats before the next reply came.

> _You are not entirely without merit._

"You mean you like me." John teased.  
  
Silence. Then Sherlock minimized the text document and opened up the browser. They started zipping through all of the standard news sites. John almost got the sense that Sherlock was embarrassed.  
  
"I'm glad you're here too, you silly git."  
  
YouTube came up, along with that video of the cat falling off the shelf that John liked so much, and he snorted with laughter. Then, he couldn't help but wonder about all of Sherlock's various expressions that he would never see. The very idea broke his heart a little.

-x-x-x-

Sherlock followed the set of footsteps over the horizon and over the next sand dune. The ground beneath him was loose and soft, but this being a dream and all, it didn't bother with the pesky details like sand caught inside his albeit inappropriate footwear. At the top of the hill, he spotted John. Sherlock slid down the rest of the hill with minimal effort and didn't even so much as wrinkle his suit. But after a few minutes in this desert landscape, his body felt chilled.  
  
He disapproved severely of dream logic.  
  
John was lying flat on his back, eyes closed and his face tilted up toward the sky. He wore his army fatigues. The area of his upper sleeve where the medic's Red Cross should be affixed was empty. Medical personnel were especially targeted by some, to the point where it was safer to forgo the cross entirely.  
  
Sherlock's chest constricted without warning.  
  
John looked peaceful— a welcomed change from the wartime milieu of the last nightmare (even if it did offer interesting data). The casual observer may mistake him as sleeping, but Sherlock knew better. Just as he knew that John was entirely aware of his presence, despite giving no outward indication. Sherlock studied the man— a reflected visage of someone different yet not entirely so from before they ever met. In this dream, John's self-image is most definitely younger than his current 36 years of age. If Sherlock had to hazard a guess, he would place this John firmly in his mid-twenties, freshly shipped out and whose jagged edges had yet to be sharpened and honed.  
  
John's lips quirked up in a light smile. "Hey there, stranger. Are you just going to stand there all night?" He extended an arm out and brushed a mound of sand back and forth a few times.  
  
The action inexplicably reminded Sherlock of snow angels? But why? Should have been the sort of detail he already deleted years ago.  
  
"I remember there was this American squad passing through Camp Bastion around Christmas one year. They were all new recruits, young and fresh-faced. Most of them were from Minnesota, never seen that much sand before. Even thought it'd be funny to make sand angels with the holidays and all. Except they complained about digging sand out of their arse cracks for days afterwards."  
  
What a random non-sequitur.  
  
John popped open one eye to look up at Sherlock, "Not random. I could hear you thinking about snow angels." Then the other eye fell open and John's gaze moved past him entirely.  
  
Shared attention, Sherlock reminded himself as he followed the direction of the gaze. Up and up, until his neck craned back. Now Sherlock was a city boy born and bred-- grew up entirely in London except for family trips to the countryside. He hated it: all that grass and open space and the boredom. When they were boys, Mycroft tried to take him stargazing once in an utterly transparent attempt to give their parents a break from Sherlock. Sherlock had deleted much information about the extraterrestrial since, but he still remembered the swatches of stars not visible under bright, city lights.  
  
This was more than mere patches though. This was a river— a sea— an ocean of silver and white spilling across the dark expanse above. Sherlock's stomach plummeted into the soles of his feet and then the rest of his body with it. He could almost feel the rotation of the earth, as absurd as that sounded. And even Sherlock knew that the full moon couldn't be that large. After a few seconds, he squeezed his eyes shut against the vertigo and spinning that made it impossible to focus on any one point for too long.  
  
So it's not his fault that the light touch against the back of his hand startled him. John had sat up and his more familiar careworn face looked back at Sherlock, with all its wrinkles and fledgling crow's feet.  
  
"You okay?" He asked.  
  
"Fine, your mental reconstruction of the Afghan night sky is just visually jarring."  
  
"Hate to see how you'd react to the real thing then."  
  
When Sherlock reopened his eyes, the sight that greeted him was noticeably muted. Like someone had turned down the contrast and sharpness in an image. Had John toned down the dreamscape just for him?  
  
"Wasn't me," John shrugged. "It got like that when you first closed your eyes."  
  
"That," Sherlock licked his dry, chapped lips. "Is extremely disconcerting."  
  
"You're kinda inside my head, so some of it is filtering through pretty loud and clear."  
  
"And you dream of Afghanistan far too often. You miss it." It was something Sherlock had suspected for a while. This was just confirmation.  
  
John shifted uncomfortably. Sherlock supposed that was also to be expected. He did just accuse John of longing for a war zone. Then John straightened his back, face young and unlined again, and stared back defiantly. "Why would you think that?"  
  
"It's not the violence that you revel in— not that it particularly bothered you either. You already had a higher tolerance toward violence than most before entering the army." Sherlock held back his deductions on the why. But from the way John winced, Sherlock must have hit a nerve regardless. "No, you enjoyed being useful and the camaraderie. Both your parents are long dead, you have no other close family, and you are more or less estranged from your sister. The army provided you with a surrogate family of sorts. The adrenaline rush that the experience provided you also didn't hurt."  
  
John ran a hand through his sun-bleached hair. "When you put it that way, I sound extremely fucked up."  
  
Sherlock kept going. It was good to simply be able to talk without a filter. And despite his best efforts, there was no way he could type nearly as fast as he could think. "Being invalided out was the worst of all possible scenarios. You were torn from your friends with almost no time to adjust to the idea of life outside the military. Civilian life appears to chafe you. You think it's because you're being left behind by the speed of the world. It's quite the opposite: the world isn't moving nearly fast enough for your taste. Worse, your injuries rendered you incapable of practicing any medicine beyond the most rudimentary of GP work. Nerve damage will do that. Your physical therapist was confident you would be able to recover the vast majority of your mobility, but no medical board will approve you to perform surgery again. Some days, you wondered if you were better off dead."  
  
Not these days though. John no longer stared morosely at his illegal firearm with it sitting in plain sight. Sherlock intended to keep it that way.  
  
"We know why I was wondering around late at night: adrenaline junkie with a death wish? But what were you doing that got you shot in the first place?"  
  
Sherlock frowned. He had been so entirely wrapped up in John that he had forgotten about his wayward serial killer. Definitely unprecedented. "I told you I was a consulting detective. I was chasing a murderer for the police. The killer was bound to revisit the scene of his crime in the days following, so I simply waited there for him there."  
  
"How did you know he would come back?"  
  
"It was obvious, John. The killer arranged each of the scenes carefully. It smacks of pretension at art, or at least theatrics. He's showing off. No doubt he feels it necessary to revel in the scene he's created— probably feels compelled to revisit them afterwards. He could have taken videos or pictures, but the nature of the scene would necessitate either a tripod or an accomplice. The evidence supports neither of those possibilities— no groove marks and double the culprits inevitably lead to trace evidence. It's doubtful either option would appeal to him in the first place."  
  
“Wait, you said ‘scenes’— as in multiples— as in more than one. I haven’t heard anything in the news.” John seemed momentarily baffled.  
  
“Just because the police are too thick to notice a pattern doesn't mean it's not there,” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Eight deaths within the last three years, all in the city along one side of the Thames and all by strangulation. The police are blind because they refuse to look past the obvious markers of a serial killer. The victims may span the range in term of age and gender, but they’re all undoubtedly his ‘type’.”  
  
"So you went and confronted _a serial killer_ on your own?" John shook his head and laughed in disbelief. “You really are both brilliant and mad.”  
  
John’s obvious fondness was like a warm bath on a cold night. Sherlock tried to brush the feeling aside. "Of course, I work alone, John. Other people just slow me down."  
  
"Other people might have kept you from getting shot." John sounded awfully smug, as if the argument was already won.  
  
Well, with any other person, he would have.  
  
Sherlock sniffled, "I resent the implication that I'm some amateur," the last word spat out with venom. "This was not the first time I've faced down an armed criminal. I do not need some sort of keeper."  
  
"Except that you're now dead."  
  
Sherlock opened his mouth to argue. Except that... John was completely right. Touche. And Sherlock could have died alone as he always envisioned he would. He hadn’t— because John had tried to help him when he could (should) have turned around and left Sherlock to his slow and agonizing death.  
  
“Thank you, John.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
Even in death now, he wasn’t alone anymore.


End file.
